‘Anything you have to say, you can say to me here,’ Jan answered.
Kostos hesitated, glancing quickly round at White and myself. The movements of his head were jerky. ‘Well, what have you decided?’ His voice sounded small and peevish against the silence of rock and cliff and water.
Jan didn’t say anything. He stared down at Kostos from his seat at the bulldozer, and his gaze shifted to Ali. The only sound was the soft tinkle of water seeping through rock.
‘Come on now,’ Kostos said. ‘You make your mind up, eh?’
‘I’ve made up my mind. The answer is No.’
Ali took Kostos by the arm and they conferred together in a whisper. And all the time Ali was looking at Jan. Finally he spoke to him in French. ‘You are not the man I am expecting to meet here.’
‘No,’ Jan said. ‘He’s dead.’
Ali nodded his head. His face showed no surprise. ‘But you have the deeds of Kasbah Foum?’
‘Yes.’
Again Kostos and Ali conferred together. ‘C’est fa.’ Ali nodded and folded his hands in the sleeves of his djellaba. ‘My friend says that the original offer still stands,’ Kostos announced. ‘For the papers, five hundred thousand francs.’
There was a silence. Nobody moved, nobody said anything. It was like a tableau. Then Ali turned his head slowly and gazed at the cliff face, now rapidly being cleared of debris. His features were impassive. Only his eyes betrayed his interest. They were dark and brown, but they gleamed in the fading light.
He glanced at Jan, staring at him as though to imprint the shape of his face on his mind. Then he turned without a word and climbed into a jeep. Kostos hesitated, looking from one to the other of us uncertainly. He seemed nervous, almost reluctant to leave. He was a European, and I suddenly got the impression he was uneasy. Then he turned, ducking his head in a quick, awkward movement, and scuttled back to the jeep, his thin-soled shoes making a frail, scraping sound on the rocks. The jeep drove off and we watched it go, not moving or speaking until the sound of it died away and was lost in the stillness.
‘He. knows now,’ Jan said to me.
I nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘The wind has dropped, hasn’t it?’ His voice trembled slightly. ‘I think we should try and see the Caid right away.’
‘We should have gone before,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Of course. But it seemed a pity that this bulldozer should not be operating. And we’re so close to the entrance now.’ There was warmth and excitement in his voice again. ‘White doesn’t know the exact location of the entrance. But I do. Marcel gave me bearings. Another two days’ work …’ He stopped there, his excitement damped by my silence. ‘What’s the matter, Philip? You’re worried about Ali. Is that it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a pity we didn’t see the Caid this afternoon. So long as Ali thought you were Wade, there was no reason for him to oppose the visit. But now … it may be dangerous.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He climbed down off the bulldozer. ‘I didn’t think…’ His shoulders moved awkwardly and he made a gesture with his hands that embraced the cliff-face, the whole gorge. ‘I was too excited.’
Ed White came over to us then. ‘It looks like you really have got the deeds of Kasbah Foum,’ he said.
Jan nodded.
‘I see.’ He stood staring at us for a moment. ‘That makes a difference, doesn’t it?’ He seemed about to say something further, but instead he turned and walked slowly back across the rubble and climbed up on to the driving seat of his bulldozer again. The engine started with a roar and the lumbering machine turned back towards the cliff-face.
‘Come on,’ Jan said, gripping my arm. ‘We must see the Caid right away.’
‘It’ll be night before we get there.’
‘I know, I know. But that may help.’ He glanced back as a beam of light cut the gloom of the gorge. Ed White had switched on his headlights. ‘I was a fool. I forgot all about Kostos coming here at five. Once I got on that bulldozer … It was good to be doing something constructive. I worked with a bulldozer in Germany for a time — before they discovered I had other uses.’ He laughed quickly, nervously. ‘We’ll go and have some tea with Julie. You English are always less pessimistic after you’ve had some tea. Then we’ll go to Kasbah Foum-Skhira.’
‘We’ll need a guide,’ I said.
He didn’t say anything and we walked in silence out of the gorge. The sun had set and a velvet twilight was rapidly descending on the valley. But the palmerie was still visible and I could just make out the brown of the kasbah towers rising above the dusty green of the palms.
I wished we had visited the place in daylight. ‘If Legard had taken us there it would have been — ‘
‘Well, he didn’t,’ Jan said sharply.
‘No, but — ‘ There was no point in dwelling on it. The palmerie had faded into the dusk already. Everything was very still. It seemed impossible that the pale surface of the land could ever have been whirled up into the air in a cloud of sand; it looked solid and petrified in the half-light. ‘What are you going to do about White?’ I asked,him. ‘Don’t forget he holds a concession.’
‘Oh, we’ll probably come to some agreement. I like him. He’s easy to get on with. He’s a construction engineer and he fits this sort of country. If the Caid confirms my title to the place…” He didn’t finish. I think that the ‘If was too big.
We walked on in silence and as we neared the camp I saw something move along the darkening bed of the stream. It was a black, compact mass of movement. I strained my eyes and it resolved itself into a herd of goats being driven by a small boy. Jan had seen it, too, and he said, ‘Perhaps the boy would guide us to the kasbah?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘A boy’s no good. He hasn’t the necessary authority. They might not admit us. But if we could get his father …’ I was thinking that a man who had a herd of goats would almost certainly be conservatively minded and a supporter of the Caid’s policy rather than of Ali’s fanaticism. I turned off the track and scrambled down the bank. Jan followed us.
The boy had stopped now and was watching us nervously. I called to him in his own language to come and speak with us, but he didn’t move. And when we came up to him he stood, regarding us with wide, solemn eyes. He was like a startled animal and at any moment I was afraid he would turn and run. But the goats had stopped and were nibbling at the reed tufts. The boy was watching them all the time and I knew that so long as the goats were there, the boy would remain. They were in his charge and the responsibility was a heavy one, for they represented considerable wealth in this starved, arid land.
I explained to him that I wanted to speak with his father, but he stared at me out of his large, awed eyes and said nothing. I repeated my request slowly and clearly. He looked at the goats as though he were afraid I might spirit them away by magic whilst I held his gaze with my strange talk. Then his eyes came back to me as though fascinated. Probably I was the first European who had ever spoken to him.
In the end I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out two hundred franc notes. I held them out to him. He smiled shyly, eagerly, and shook his head. But his eyes remained on the notes. Again I asked him if he would fetch his father for me.
I knew he understood and I waited. His gaze alternated between my face and the notes in my hand. Then suddenly he leaned forward, swift as a bird, grabbed them from my fingers, and with a little shriek of excitement went scampering away after his goats which had gradually merged into the dusk as they drifted from reed tuft to reed tuft.
We watched him rounding them up with shrill cries of Aiya, Aiya, driving them towards the ruined kasbah. ‘Will he bring his father to us?’ Jan asked.
‘I think so,’ I said, and we went on to the caravan.
We had just settled down to tea when the boy’s figure went flying past, bare feet scuttering over the sand, scarcely seeming to touch the ground; a small, flickering shadow in the gathering dusk.
I turned the bus then and switched on the sidelights, and soon afterwards the boy appeared with his father. He was an oldish man, tall and slightly stooped, with a long, pale face heavily lined with years of sun and sand. We exchanged greetings and I invited him into the caravan. He sent the boy off and, after slipping his feet out of his sandals, he climbed in and seated himself cross-legged on the berth. From an inner pocket he produced the two hundred franc notes I had given his son and held them out to me. ‘My son is not to be paid for bringing his father to you, sidi,’ he said.